It's finally done-The Three Gorges Dam

Finn McCool

Finn McCool

Captain
Registered Member
Let's not turn this into another America vs. China pissing contest.

On topic, as people have said, attacking the dam would be difficult, because of its geographic location mostly. Also, the dam has SAM sites and AAA batteries protecting it IIRC. Lastly, it's a massive structure that is heavily strengthened for earthquake safety. So it would require several large hits to break. The only feasible way to do it that I can think of is with a smuggled in nuke detonated nearby, although even that might not work unless it was really close.

Hitting the locks though would cause some problems to China's economy, and would not require the same amount of firepower. They'd probably be repaired pretty quickly.

But as many people have said, attacking Three Gorges Dam is not advisable, as it would certainly result in massive, probably nuclear, retaliation. And attacking the dam would only be useful in a long-term total war scenario that I just don't see China or any other nuclear nation getting involved in any time in the foreseeable future. Therefore, any serious consideration of an attack on it is laughable at best, because it is nearly impossible, and would only produce undesirable strategic outcomes.
 
bladerunner

bladerunner

Banned Idiot
I wonder if they could come up with a nuclear weapon that penetred several hundred meters into the ground and before exploding and causing a localized richter ten earth quake effect on the dam, thus endagering its structural integrity.

@Finn
as it would certainly result in massive, probably nuclear, retaliation.
How can that be when the Chinese have a policy of no first use of nuclear weapons?
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ravenshield936

Banned Idiot
bladerunner said:
Theres a precedence of taking out a country's infrastructure even if it has civilian uses.

eg RAF taking out the German Dams during WW2
USA Bombing raids/strikes in Vietnam
The attacking of the Merchant marine/ during 1st and 2nd WW was considered permissable
Nato bombing in the Balkans taking out bridges etc

THe 3 Gorges dam would be undoubtedly supplying power to the armaments factories or powering other military uses eg radar etc,therefore in a total war situation it does become a legitimate target.

If the forces opposing China was to consider the dam a legit target Im sure it would be well signalled before the actual outbreak of hostilities

To prevent a large scale loss of life downstream, all the authorities in China have to do, is to empty the dam. The ball is in their court so to speak


(All you have to do is go back and read about all the possible targets published prior to the IRAQ wars 1&2 and all possible targets againts Iran by the warmongerers, armchair generals, wanabe military strategists, military forum posters, in fact the whole fkn. kabodle ), and what measures will be taken if IRAN was to play silly buggers in the gulf.

Similarly targets in China would be discussed by the free press in the West as well as examples from above , with comments supporting or dismissive from the military.etc etc
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my professor, who teaches japanese history, mentioned the word victor's justice. what she was implying would be the controversy of the atomic bombings. technically, atomic bombings are war crimes itself since it heavily affects civilian populations and many targets are civilians, noncombatants too.

so long story short, attacking a civilian target or to inflict mass civilian casualties of that scale will make its way into the world history as the worst act of war crimes/genocide ever. nothing can be said to ever justify the destruction of the 3 gorges dam if it's only supplying power. and back to the discussion of victor's justice, yes that meant dambusting (if it did affect german civilian populations) and the atomic bombings, are war crimes too. the only reason they werent talked was because it's victor's justice. the allies won. in fact if we look into the war crimes committed by the allies, we'll learn that allied nations also committed its shares during wars.
 
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Infra_Man99

Banned Idiot
solarz said:
ROFL...

America can influence Chinese public opinion? I think that boat has sailed with the 2008 Tibet riots.

As for friends, is this guy truly naive, or deluded, enough to believe that there is such a thing as friendship in international politics?

Sure, the US can muster force anywhere on the globe, but it does so by paying a heavy economic price. China's defense budget is only a fraction of that of the US, allowing it to further its economic growth.
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Yeah, I think the guy who wrote that article, Francesco or whatever his name is, is in loony world. His opinions can be trashed along with the Bush Administration opinion about weapons of WMDs in Iraq, about how they'll welcome the US military as liberators, about how they hate us for our freedom, about how freedom works (while the Patriot Act kicks into higher and higher gear, and the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve expand their financial powers), "Mission Accomplished!" and so on. Then there is the Democrat Party loony belief that Obama will convince the world to completely trust or obey the US. So far, Obama the president or the professional politician has been a worldwide disappoint, but he seems to be a more amiable person than Bush.

The danger isn't in the reality of the belief (it's obviously fiction). The danger is the loonies who believe in this stuff and behave according to these loony ideas.


Anyhow, I once read a Chinese news article which stated China's military knows other nations WILL attack the dam to weaken and destabilize China. Supposedly, China's military gathered other nations' military ideas, and China's military discovered foreign armies know a dam attack could tremendously hurt China. China's military is well aware of the fact that almost every war in history involves attacking civilians, and modern wars definitely injured lots of civilians (e.g., WW1, WW2, Korean War, Vietnam War, the 1st Iraq War and the decade-long Iraq sanctions, and the current wars). China's military said they will consider a dam attack to be similar to a nuclear attack or an attack by a WMD, and China will respond with its own WMDs.
 
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ravenshield936

Banned Idiot
bladerunner said:
Be that as it may I only put the author of the articles views in because I think it does reflect much of the Western geo political view in a China V America situation.
The former prime minster of Australia reflected mainstream Australian View by saying "Where America goes, so does Australia" and many NZ still think the same way as well. There are many other countries with a attitude not to distant from that, I cant see Canada, while not always agreeing with America, embark on a course to undermine it. Can China count on such allies? or are China's allies only fair weather friends?

As for Chinas defence spending in relation to Americas, Some sources claim that its actually twice the Chinese govts figure which would put it at abot $140 billion.
This can only increase at a faster speed as China's economy grows and it needs a expanded military to protects its economic interests while Americas might start to decrease inproportion to her GDP as her power wains, thus giving her excess money to invest in the economy.
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no politics, but first the article that guy wrote showed to be in obvious bias

as for the whole aussie, canada thing, well they are western nations after all, what do we expect? the NATO and western affliations are something we all know. and i wont call them "real friends". thats retarded thinking. and if the author thinks a few western countries in nato can speak for the world, then he's very wrong.

the whole simple story is, in international politics, who has power speaks. and everyone serves themselves first.
 
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ravenshield936

Banned Idiot
bladerunner said:
I wonder if they could come up with a nuclear weapon that penetred several hundred meters into the ground and before exploding and causing a localized richter ten earth quake effect on the dam, thus endagering its structural integrity.

@Finn
as it would certainly result in massive, probably nuclear, retaliation.
How can that be when the Chinese have a policy of no first use of nuclear weapons?
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well if u're gonna hit the spot that really matters, i dun think china will give a fk bout some rules written on a paper with some signatures

also if u're gonna attack the dam which can lead to hundreds of millions of casualties, do u think china will still go soft and keep its word and be like "oh no they havent nuked us yet"?:nono:

by then like captain mactavish would say "the chinese will club every [insert nationalities of attacker] they can reach"

also richter 10 is impossible.

the difference between 2 richter levels will be equivalent of 10 times. it's logarithms when i studied math that i've learned this.

so, richter 2 is 100x of richter 1. richter 3 is 1000times of richter 1, if i remember correctly.

moabs and nukes are only up to richter 4,5 if i remember

even st helen, which explosion is very tamed compared to other volcanoes, was already several times of a nuclear warhead if i remember correctly

so for a richter 10, it's equivalent of a sizable meteoric terrestrial collision. so no, it's impossible to develop such a nuclear warhead to trigger such a response at this time with the current technology
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victtodd

New Member
bladerunner said:
The name of the game is measured response. A failed conventional strike on a strategic target does not deserve a nuclear response. Such a response would result in international condemnation, no mater what spin you tried to put on it.

Here is a passage taken from the atimes printed yesterday. I dont know whether you will agree with the authors views.

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By Francesco Sisci
...

"Furthermore, China has no real, deep friends in the world whereas America, despite all its weakness, can command friendship and loyalty from many countries. The US can muster global forces around China or any country it deems a problem. America can command global public opinion and even influence Chinese domestic public opinion, whereas the Chinese government sometimes has a hard time commanding its own arena. "..........."
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Next time you quote somebody, plz make it some credible source instead of this kind of lunatic, or you would just open another can of worms.
 
bladerunner

bladerunner

Banned Idiot
victtodd said:
Next time you quote somebody, plz make it some credible source instead of this kind of lunatic, or you would just open another can of worms.
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Actually not an unexpected response, considering which side of the fence you stood. Actually I threw that in to show what China could be up against when it accompanied its response to its attack on the 3 gorges, with a bit of spin. I think the spin aimed at the uncommitted, is so much harder for China, following the world wide exposure on how that Girl at Duke university and her folks at home were treated because she chose to differ from her fellow Chinese students.

Actually Im treading on dangerous ground here esp with the mods and youse
;) so .............
 
Engineer

Engineer

Major
AssassinsMace said:
We live in an age where the definition of words change according to who sees fit. If the definition of words can change on a whim, how hard is it for rules? I can point to many examples of note. If you look at what's been happening in the world you can see human rights crimes of the highest order happening where if China were committing them, the world would be on the brink of nuclear war... seriously. Rules are to trick people into believing that those that make them are fair. Crimes today are solely determined by who commits it and who's the victim. By that I'm sure the Three Gorges Dam is considered a "legitimate" target. All you need is the media to spell it out that the dam does something like supply power to a bomb factory and voila... it becomes a legitimate legal target regardless of what you think.
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Fully agreed. If you need an example, look no further than the 2008 Tibetian riot and 2009 Xinjiang riot. The West didn't consider people getting killed by rioters to be innocent deaths then, what's make people think that the West would consider killing of hundred of millions of Chinese to be a war crime?

bladerunner said:
To prevent a large scale loss of life downstream, all the authorities in China have to do, is to empty the dam. The ball is in their court so to speak
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That's exactly the sort of explanation that the West will come up with to justify genocide, but what's more worrisome is that it is also the sort of mentality that many people in the West have when it comes to China. In fact, there is no need to explain the link between the dam and a war-factory. All the Western press needed to do is simply point out that those people deserve to die because they are in China, and many in the West will accept that explanation without question.
 
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